To Whom It May Concern; the following Report Card detail’s Johnny’s achievements over the last four years.

The following contrasts compare four years, ranging from the end of 2008 to the end of this year, 2012.

Whilst it is acknowledged that the Global Financial Crisis impacted harshly on our society and economy, it is also fair to say that National has had the benefits of starting out with a sound economy (surpluses, low unemployment, etc) in 2008 and four years in office to make good on it’s election promises.

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Incomes

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The rhetoric: (and gawd almighty, there was plenty of it…)

“We will be unrelenting in our quest to lift our economic growth rate and raise wage rates.” – John Key, 29 January 2008

“One of National’s key goals, should we lead the next Government, will be to stem the flow of New Zealanders choosing to live and work overseas. We want to make New Zealand an attractive place for our children and grandchildren to live – including those who are currently living in Australia, the UK, or elsewhere.

To stem that flow so we must ensure Kiwis can receive competitive after-tax wages in New Zealand.” – John Key, 6 September 2008

Key was practically out-doing Labour in championing the cause of the Working Man & Woman getting better wages. The spirits of Jim Knox, Norman Kirk, et al, would have been dancing a happy-jig in approval at Dear Leader’s statements.

The reality:

The reality was 180 degrees polar opposite to Key’s wage-raising statements. But National’s actions were not just opposed to raising wages – their policies were designed specifically to lower wages; undermine working conditions; and attract corporate interest. Finance Minister even admitted as such when he let slip on TVNZ’s Q+A, in April 2011,

BILL Well, it’s a way of competing, isn’t it? I mean, if we want to grow this economy, we need the capital – more capital per worker – and we’re competing for people as well.

GUYON So it’s part of our strategy to have wages 30% below Australia?

BILL Well, they are, and we need to get on with competing for Australia. So if you take an area like tourism, we are competing with Australia. We’re trying to get Australians here instead of spending their tourist dollar in Australia.

GUYON But is it a good thing?

BILL Well, it is a good thing if we can attract the capital, and the fact is Australians- Australian companies should be looking at bringing activities to New Zealand because we are so much more competitive than most of the Australian economy.

GUYON So let’s get this straight – it’s a good thing for New Zealand that our wages are 30% below Australia?

BILL No, it’s not a good thing, but it is a fact. We want to close that gap up, and one way to close that gap up is to compete, just like our sports teams are doing. This weekend we’ve had rugby league, netball, basketball teams, and rugby teams out there competing with Australia. That’s lifting the standard. They’re closing up the gap.

GUYON But you said it was an advantage, Minister.

BILL Well, at the moment, if I go to Australia and talk to Australians, I want to put to them a positive case for investment in New Zealand, because while we are saving more, we’re not saving more fast enough to get the capital that we need to close the gap with Australia. So Australia already has 40 billion of investment in New Zealand. If we could attract more Australian companies, activities here, that would help us create the jobs and lift incomes. ”

English initially admitted that ” it is a good thing ” if wages are lower, to ” attract the capital ” – and then, realising his faux pas, goes on to correct himself in his next response to Espiner. But the truth is out; National sees lower wages as a means by which to attract corporate investment from overseas. Especially in competing with Australia.

Then he attempts to extricate himself from the hole he has dug by likening our cheaper wages as competitiveness similar to sporting games, ” rugby league, netball, basketball teams, and rugby teams out there competing with Australia “.

(If this sounds like sheer lunacy, you are [1] Sane and [2] Not a National voter.)

English’s slip of the tongue is backed up by National’s on-going campaign against workers in this country.

As detailed in an earlier blogpost (see: John Key’s track record on raising wages), practically every aspect of National’s policies; law changes; and other actions have been deliberately designed to reduce wages and conditions.

The following are excerpts from that earlier blogpost. (For full details, simply click on the heading-links.)

Even if it were true (which is doubtful) – POAL has never released the workings of how they arrived at that sum, despite requests), isn’t such a good wage precisely what Dear Leader was advocating in his quotes above?

POAL management sought to reduce costs; casualise their workforce; and compete with Ports of Tauranga for shipping business. Unfortunately, competing on costs would, by necessity, involve driving down wages.

Rather than supporting the workers, Dear Leader bought into a situation where international shipping companies were playing New Zealand ports off against each other, to gain the lowest possible port-charges. Even local company, Fonterra, was playing the game.

Here we have a situation where New Zealand workers were enjoying high wages – something John Key insists he supports – and yet he was effectively allowing international corporations to create circumstances where those wages could eventually be cut and driven down.

On 28 May 2012, Dear Leader explained why rest home workers weren’t getting an increase in pay on his watch,

“It’s one of those things we’d love to do if we had the cash. As the country moves back to surplus it’s one of the areas we can look at but I think most people would accept this isn’t the time we have lots of extra cash”.”

On 9 October, Labour Minister Kate Wilkinson announced that National intended to introduce a new Youth Rate, to take effect in April, next year. The rate would be set at $10.80 an hour – compared to the minimum rate of $13.50 an hour currently, and would include 16 to 19 year olds.

As Scoop.co.nz reported,

“That equates to $10.80 an hour, or $432 before tax for a 40-hour week. From April next year, the ‘Starting Out Wage’ will apply to 16- and 17-year-olds in the first six months of a job, to 18- and 19-year-olds entering the workforce after spending more than six months on a benefit, or 16 to 19-year-olds in a recognised industry training course.”

One of the most far-reaching aspects of National’s covert agenda to make the country’s workforce “more flexible” (translation; more exploitable) is their stated intention to remove Part 6A of the Employment Relations Act (ERA), which continues (or transfers under similar conditions and pay) the employment of low-paid employees such as caretakers, cleaners, catering workers, hospital orderlies and laundry workers, after a business is restructured or sold.

Once National’s so-called “reforms” were bedded in, they changed it, implementing the real policy they had wanted all along,

“The 90-day trial period is to be extended to enable all employers and new employees to have the chance to benefit from it.” – Kate Wilkinson, 18 July 2010

Once Part 6A is removed from the lawbooks, the lowest-paid workers in our communities will be vulnerable. A new employer will be able to re-write their contracts at whim; reduce their pay; change their conditions, or dismiss them altogether. There are many such small business and the impact on their workers could be severe.

Green Party industrial-relations spokeswoman, Denise Roche, was 100% on-the nose when she described these – and other “reforms” as,

“This decision is straight from the Bill Birch era of industrial relations.”

This is indeed a return to the Employment Contracts Act – by stealth. National is too gutless to face the country by honestly presenting a manifesto returning to the ECA.

Remind us, Mr Prime Minister, how scrapping Part 6A will raise wages, as per your promises?

The Employment Relations Authority can declare in certain circumstances that collective bargaining has ended.

A duty of good faith does not require the parties to conclude a collective agreement.

Employers can opt out of multi-employer bargaining.

Partial pay reductions in cases of partial strike action.

Removing the 30-day rule that forces non-union members to take union terms and conditions.

Items 1, 2, and 3 have only one purpose; to ensure that an employer can walk away from the negotiating table; scrap any collective agreement; and re-hire workers on individual contracts.

It is solely designed to destroy unions once and for all.

Had Items 1, 2, and 3 been in force this year, POAL (Ports of Auckland Ltd) would have been able to abandon the bargaining table after a mock “negotiation”; locked out any worker on strike; and issued take-it-or-leave-it individual contracts.

The worker’s negotiating agent, the Maritime Union, would have been dis-empowered and destroyed.

Only the current provisions of good-faith bargaining in the Employment Relations Act 2000 and the Employment Relations Authority were able to stop POAL from unilaterally walking away from the negotiating table. (On 27 March this year, the Employment Court issued a judgement severely admonishing POAL for their actions, and ordering them to return to negotiations.)

This may satisfy free market fanatics, but it does nothing to fulfill Dear Leader’s pledges to raise wages, or create new jobs.

As usual, Key promises one thing whilst his Ministers work quietly in the background to achieve the polar-opposite.

Thus far we have seen no concrete indications that John Key is implementing his promises in 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, and this year, to raise wages.

Instead, Key and his cronies in National have been studiously implementing law-changes that will inevitably result in the opposite; a dismantling of hard-won working conditions; an undermining of worker-representation in negotiations, and an eventual lowering of wages .

The only conclusion that can be made is that Key has wilfully deceived voters. His public statements advocated raising wages whilst in back-rooms, he and National Party ministers have been contriving to achieve a diametrically opposite agenda.

It serves National’s undisclosed agenda to lower wages, to attract international ‘investment’, and to allow corporations to increase profits on the backs of low-paid workers.

As the stats above show, National has some way to go before wage increases match those under the previous Labour government.

However, nothing that National has done thus far, in the last four years, will go anywhere near raising wages for ordinary workers.

Instead, the expectation is that a minority of sought-after skilled tradespeople, professionals, and technicians will enjoy moderate increases, whilst the rest of the country either stagnates or goes backward.